


In His Father's Image

by Avelera



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Drabble, Family, Gen, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 13:28:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2734325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avelera/pseuds/Avelera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thrain lives, but at times even he cannot tell Thorin and Thror apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In His Father's Image

**Author's Note:**

  * For [madame_faust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/gifts).



> A drabble written for madame_faust, based on the Tumblr prompt, "I’d really like delirious!Thrain being reunited with Thorin (via Gandalf-magics, hence delirium) and mistaking Thorin for Thror. I love the delicious implication that Thorin resembles Thror in multiple ways. And Thorin’s reaction."
> 
> Because we need more fics where Thrain is included in "Everyone Lives" AUs.

“Father?”

The voice was thin, and reedy. It came from the bed, shrouded with thick velvet curtains to keep out the draft. Thorin approached it slowly, as if the weight he carried in his heart weighed him down. When he stopped beside the bed, he took Thráin’s scarred hand with its missing finger in his own.

“No, it is only me, Thorin” he said. He did not call Thráin “father”, it only served to confuse the elderly dwarf. But they had made some progress, at least Thráin seemed to accept that Thorin was not Thrór returned from the dead. He could not entirely blame his father for the belief, for certainly when Thorin had been lost within his own madness, he had thought much the same about himself.

“Ah. Apologies, my good friend,” Thráin said. He stroked Thorin’s hand absently with dry and wrinkled fingers. “Forgive this old dwarf, my sight is not what it once was.”

Thorin nodded, and his hand squeezing Thráin’s in reassurance. He would like to think if anything he more closely resembled his father rather than his grandfather now. A patch covered the eye he’d lost in the Battle of Five Armies, one of many injuries. His sword arm would never be as strong as it once had been, yet he wore the wounds with equal parts pride and humility. They were badges of how much he had to lose before he returned to himself, his recovery a mark of love by those who cared for him.

“… You do look so like him, though,” Thráin whispered. He traced the back of his fingers along Thorin’s cheek, along the line of his nose, gently as the brush of a moth's wing. “Same eyes, same face and bearing. If not him, I might guess you were my great-uncle Frór. But he is dead, lost to the cold drakes of the Grey Mountains.”

“I know the tale,” Thorin murmured. “But I am not him either.”

“Who are you then?” Thráin said. His eyes were suddenly jewel bright, more lucid than Thorin had seen them in days, since Gandalf had brought an aged and injured dwarf to the gates of Erebor, even while Thorin had lain close to death in the field medic’s tent. “I have a son named Thorin, but he is only a lad. Far too young to go to war, far too young to bear any of this…”

Thorin’s throat tightened and he inclined his head, his voice roughening. “Your son is very fortunate, to have such a father.”

“No,” Thráin said. “I am have not been a good one. I abandoned him. I did not mean to, but you see I was not given a choice…” His gaze drifted, clouding over once again with the whirling mists of fading memory. “I should have told him I loved him every day. It is very important, Thorin, that you tell your loved ones this. I did not know before. Not until the dragon came, until the battle where I lost my youngest son, my baby boy. You must never let a day pass without telling them so.”

“I will not,” Thorin said, holding his father’s hand tighter. It was not the first time Thráin had asked him this, and always he responded with the same earnestness, even if he be asked a thousand times. He always would.

“You are a good man, Thorin,” Thráin said. His voice grew fainter, sleep coming over him. He was rarely awake for any length of time these days. He faded in and out of delirium; as if the torments that had robbed him of so many years of rest had all caught up to him had once. “I should be very lucky if my son grows up to be like you. But I hope… not as scarred. Or as sad.”

“Thank you,” Thorin said, but the words were scraped raw, a tiny droplets spattered across their joined hands.

“I hope to see him again, someday…” Thráin said, but the words ended with a light flutter of breath as he drifted to sleep again, chin falling to his chest, features smoothing with relief that Thorin had not the heart to deny him.

“Goodnight, father,” Thorin said, stroking Thráin’s hair back from his face and leaning in to press their foreheads together. “I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed, please feel free to check me out on [Tumblr](http://avelera.tumblr.com), and consider leaving a comment.


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